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The metaphors of strategic management are predominantly rooted in competition in support of the objective to achieve a “competitive advantage.” Drawn from military, sport, and (oftentimes incomplete) interpretations of evolutionary biology, these metaphors imply that business is a zero-sum competitive game. Metaphors are not “just” words but, rather, they impact thoughts and actions. Hence the use of competitive metaphors encourages competitive behavior in business. We argue that this misdirects the purpose of business from being about value creation and, moreover, that value creation is most effectively achieved by approaching business as a fundamentally cooperative endeavor. Furthermore, these “survival of the fittest” sorts of metaphors inhibit considerations toward ethics, humanism, and sustainability. We call for a shift toward metaphors rooted in cooperation and as a means to do so we also call for a shift in focus from achieving “competitive advantage” toward achieving “cooperative advantage” as the objective of strategic management. We conclude by laying out some promising research avenues for further considerations.

This thesis offers a critical contribution to the theories of work-life balance. Within the
contemporary theoretical perspectives on work and life the individuals are constructed
as being responsible for work-life balance by turning it into a problem of the personal
behaviour, decisions, psychological traits and family condition of the human subject.
In this sense the everyday problem of balancing between work and home is reduced to
be primarily an individual problem and decision. When the problem of work-life
balance is raised in this way, it is difficult for companies to offer managerial and
organizational solutions that do not automatically exclude this as an individual problem.
It might be possible for managers and organizations to help the employees in achieving
work-life balance, but it is fundamentally a challenge that the individual employees
must solve.
The thesis offers a different perspective on the relation between work and life. This
perspective is not based upon the individual employees’ perception and hence
constitution of work-life balance. Instead, it is argued that the constitution of the
relation of work and life is to be found in its effects. These effects are not established in
the constitution of the boundary between work and home, but are rather recognized by
how the employees determine and define activities and tasks as work. For example, is it
work to send email in the evening? Is it work to read an article at the weekend? Is it
work to update a profile on Facebook? The question is therefore ‘what is work?’ and not
‘what is the boundary between work and home?’

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Abstract
During the last decade, strategy scholars have increasingly converged on organizational
capabilities as a key construct in strategy research. We explicate some of the underlying,
unstated assumptions of current capabilities-based work by drawing on seminal work in the
philosophy of social science, particularly the debate between methodological individualism
and collectivism. We argue that a number of explanatory anomalies as well as the apparent
lack of progress in capabilities-based work are partly due to much of capabilities-based
work being based on collectivist notions that sidestep critical individual-level
considerations, including individual action and heterogeneity. In this note we do not deny
or reject the notion of routines or capabilities per se, but rather call for an increased
emphasis on how these collective structures originate and change as a result of individual
actions.
Key words: Organizational capabilities, methodological individualism, philosophy of
social science

With the integration of post-communist countries into the European and global economy after 1990, there was strong research interest into the role of multinational enterprises (MNEs) for economic restructuring and technological catching-up. Most of the existing empirical studies on locational determinants of FDI and host country effects did not take account of East Germany. This might be for different reasons: Firstly, theoretical and empirical difficulties derive from the fact that East Germany followed a distinct transition pattern as it became a region subsumed in a larger and more mature economy. Secondly, East Germany received private investment from foreign as well as West German firms. Only the first can be considered as a foreign direct investment (FDI). Finally, there had long been a lack of micro data to adequately analyse the activities of corresponding firms from a production as well as technological perspective.

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The in vivo research methodology holds promise to improve some of the limitations of typical design cognition methodologies. Whereas typical design cognition methodology use protocol a nalysis (utilizing special ‘think-aloud’ instructions and/or artificial settings) or retrospective analyses, in vivo research attempts to study design thinking and reasoning ‘live’ or ‘online’ as it takes place in the real world. No special instructions are used since the method relies on natural dialogue taking place between designers. By recording verbalizations at product development meetings (or other suitable objects of study), transcribing, and coding the data, it is possible to test hypotheses about design cognition in the real-world. This promises to improve the ecological validity over typical design cognition studies. Problems with the methodology include labor-intensiveness leading to small samples (possible sampling errors). To deal with this problem, it is recommended to supplement in vivo research with traditional larger sample laboratory studies.

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The in vivo research methodology holds promise to improve some of the limitations of typical design cognition methodologies. Whereas typical design cognition methodology use protocol a nalysis (utilizing special ‘think-aloud’ instructions and/or artificial settings) or retrospective analyses, in vivo research attempts to study design thinking and reasoning ‘live’ or ‘online’ as it takes place in the real world. No special instructions are used since the method relies on natural dialogue taking place between designers. By recording verbalizations at product development meetings (or other suitable objects of study), transcribing, and coding the data, it is possible to test hypotheses about design cognition in the real-world. This promises to improve the ecological validity over typical design cognition studies. Problems with the methodology include labor-intensiveness leading to small samples (possible sampling errors). To deal with this problem, it is recommended to supplement in vivo research with traditional larger sample laboratory studies.

In recent years, intervention studies have become increasingly popular within occupational health psychology. The vast majority of such studies have focused on interventions themselves and their effects on the working environment and employee health and well-being. Few studies have focused on how the context and processes surrounding the intervention may have influenced the outcomes (Hurrell and Murphy, 1996). Thus, there is still relatively little published research that provides us with information on how to evaluate such strategies and processes (Saksvik, Nytrø, Dahl-Jørgensen, and Mikkelsen, 2002). This paper describes how organisation theory can be used to develop a method for identifying and analysing processes in relation to the implementation of work environment interventions. The reason for using organisation theory is twofold: 1) interventions are never implemented in a vacuum but in a specific organisational context (workplace) with certain characteristics, that the organisation theory can capture, 2) within the organisational sociological field there is a long tradition for studying organisational changes such as workplace interventions. In this paper process is defined as "individual, collective or management perceptions and actions in implementing any intervention and their influence on the overall result of the intervention" (Nytrø, Saksvik, Mikkelsen, Bohle, and Quinlan, 2000). Process evaluation can be used to a) provide feedback for improving interventions, b) interpret the outcomes of effect evaluation and c) replicate interventions in other settings minimising the number of pitfalls associated with a given intervention (Goldenhar et al., 2001).

METIS-II was a EU-FET MT project running from October 2004 to September
2007, which aimed at translating free text input without resorting to parallel corpora.
The idea was to use ‘basic’ linguistic tools and representations and to link them with
patterns and statistics from the monolingual target-language corpus. The METIS-II
project has four partners, translating from their ‘home’ languages Greek, Dutch,
German, and Spanish into English.
The paper outlines the basic ideas of the project, their implementation, the
resources used, and the results obtained. It also gives examples of how METIS-II
has continued beyond its lifetime and the original scope of the project. On the basis
of the results and experiences obtained, we believe that the approach is promising
and offers the potential for development in various directions.

Using a sample of 603 subsidiaries Chinese Multinational Corporations (MNCs) and 174 subsidiaries Indian MNCs, we explore the regional and industrial pattern of their direct investment strategies. Our analysis reveals several important facts. First, most of outward foeign direct investment (FDI) is directed in finance and real estate and services. Second, by far the majority of investment projects are carried out in the home region of Asia-Pacific. Third, outward FDI is highly concentrated geographically and the average investment project is relatively small. Fourth, establishment of subsidiaries is the most preferred way of carrying out FDI. Finally, firm-specific and location-specific characteristics are important drivers of FDI strategies. Last but not least, a large proportion of Chinese and Indian investments is conducted mainly within those countries themselves, revealing a strong multi- domestic character. Outward Foreign Direct Investment, Chinese Multinational Corporations, Indian Multinational Corporations, Market Seeking, Resource Seeking, Efficiency Seeking, Risk Diversification

Scholars increasingly seek to proffer microfoundations for macro management theory, notably strategic management theory. These microfoundations naturally revolve around human resources. We argue that proper microfoundations for strategic management theory must recognize that the management of motivation is first and foremost a matter of the management of cognitions of organizational members, an insight that we found in goal-framing theory, an emerging perspective based on cognitive science, behavioral economics, and social psychology. Building on this insight, we argue that a key reason why strategic goals matter to firm performance──that is, firm-level value creation and value capture and sustained competitive heterogeneity──is that such goals influence value creation rooted in employee motivations. Unfolding this idea allows us to generate new insight in the relations between value creation, strategic leadership and strategic goals.

We discuss the microfoundations of routines and capabilities, including why a microfoundations
view is needed and how it may inform work on organizational and competitive heterogeneity.
Building on extant research, we identify three primary categories of micro-level components
underlying routines and capabilities: individuals, social processes, and structure and design. We
discuss how these components, and their interactions, may affect routines and capabilities. In
doing so, we outline a research agenda for advancing the field’s understanding of the
microfoundations of routines and capabilities.